


love enough to make you feel brand new

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, the endless ordeal of being tim stoker in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23908783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: Tim Stoker was charming and persistent and flirted as easy as breathing, and it was surprisingly easy for Sasha to fall into a state of cheerful antagonism, teasing him every time a flirtation went awry, taking pride in her position as the one woman in the Archives Tim knew he’d never get. Under those circumstances, it was almost inevitable that they’d fall into bed together
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Not Sasha James/Tim Stoker, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 29
Kudos: 83





	love enough to make you feel brand new

Sasha James was born in May 1984, and is born in July 2016. She suffered from hay fever and her throat swelled up when she ate peanuts and she has no allergies. She never learned to drive but there’s a licence in her wallet and Tim rolls his eyes when he tugs it out because of course, of _course_ she has a licence picture that looks half-decent. 

Sasha James was not in love with Tim Stoker. Tim Stoker is in love with Sasha James.

It had all started back in research, Tim straight out of a Soho publishing house where they spent as much time in Dishoom or Hawksmoor as they did at work, swaggering into the Archives in a state of artful dishevelment and learning the names and birthdays of all of his colleagues with startling alacrity. At the time it had been intensely annoying, Sasha forced to put names to all the vaguely recognisable faces she’d been passing in the corridors (Leo from the library staff, Corinne from Legal) because to do otherwise would be to admit that she _didn’t_ know who they were. 

Sasha James didn’t - and doesn’t - like to lose face. 

Tim Stoker was charming and persistent and flirted as easy as breathing, and it was surprisingly easy to fall into a state of cheerful antagonism, teasing him every time a flirtation went awry, taking pride in her position as the one woman in the Archives Tim knew he’d never get. 

Under those circumstances, it was almost inevitable that they’d fall into bed together. They did, in December of 2014 (Annual Institute Holiday Party), and then again in February, and from then on whenever they had nothing better to do and Tim wasn’t busy flirting his way into police records or CCTV footage. It had been awkward, and then it hadn’t, and then it had been funny, and then it had been just a thing they did sometimes, drunk or sober. As Tim had put it, “Well, you know, some friends you _hug_ , some friends you kiss a bit on a night out, some friends you fuck.” 

Sasha had given a non-committal little hum, absently stroking through Tim’s hair. His head was in her lap and he was pretending not to care about _Only Connect_ , watching her starry-eyed each time she got something right (completing sequences - tarot cards, county suffixes, old presenters of _Newsnight_ ) and grinning widely when she reached one she _couldn’t_ manage (first lines of the Doctor after a regeneration), taking absolute glee in getting one for once, teasing her until she decided to tease him back. 

Sasha liked to tease, to drag her nails along his scalp, to press slick fingers into him until he was arching and gasping against her, to put him on his knees and press his face between her thighs until she was shivering against him and he was aching and untouched and ecstatic, hands twitching spasmodically against her legs.

Tim had whistled _Build Me Up, Buttercup_ around Sasha at work from time to time because her blonde bob reminded him of a buttercup, and because they joked about _The Princess Bride_ together and he liked to give heartbroken sighs of “as you wish” every time she asked him to do the photocopying or the digitisation or whatever other mundane task needed doing. He remembers this in October 2016 and feels confused because Sasha has waist-length red hair coiled into intricate plaits, anything but buttercup. He shakes it off (why would he not, he’s got the proof in front of him, Sasha on his lock screen with him at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, red hair poking out from a white hat, churros dusting her lips and fingertips with cinnamon) but the feeling lingers. 

Some friends are like that, though, aren’t they? Changeable. And Tim has never claimed to have a monopoly on what Sasha knows, what she likes, because he knows (they both know) that he has always been more attached to her than she is to him. When he gets out of quarantine, she is the first person he asks to see. She has already gone home. 

After the attack on the Archives, Sasha comes back to work and is as she has always been, Tim thinks, because there is no other way for her to be. They still laugh together but her expression is patient, indulgent, like she’s waiting for him to _actually_ get the joke, like she knows that he won’t. They still go to bed together, sometimes. Sasha kisses him, all tenderness, leads him back to bed with loving touches, presses their foreheads together while he’s inside her, and Tim wonders if he’s ever loved anyone in the world so fiercely as he loves her, wonders why the kisses feel too-sweet and cloying, why he’s missing a tug at his hair or a squeeze at the nape of his neck because Sasha isn’t like that, she never has been. She has always been like this.

They go for walks by the river, sometimes, and Tim looks at Sasha in the pink-gold light like she holds the secrets of the world, and she looks at the horizon, and that’s okay too. Sasha has never really met anyone’s eyes for long. This is normal. 

Timothy Stoker tells Sasha James that he loves her in August 2016, salt and lime still stinging at the corner of his mouth and the hit of tequila making his breath ragged. He tells her this because it’s true (because he always has) and because he is too tired to keep up a pretence with her when he is hole-punched through with new, white scars and Jon gives him looks that flay him through and make him feel inexplicably guilty even though he hasn’t done anything wrong (he thinks, he hopes, but what would he know? How would he know?) 

A week later, Sasha starts taking long lunches at Madame Tussauds. Tim watches her leave and then - because he’s a good friend - he pulls himself together and gives her her space and tries not to mind too much when he sees pictures of her with her new boyfriend, the two of them happy and laughing. Jon takes pictures of his house and Martin won’t do anything, won’t talk to him, makes excuses for him that seethe into a black cloud over Tim’s head. 

It is easier, sometimes, to be angry. Anger is a simple and clean emotion, and Tim rakes it through himself because it’s easier than the creeping feeling of doubt, the tug of grief at his throat, the burn at his eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s grieving for, only that maybe he understands Jon’s paranoia more than he’d like to admit. Sasha has tiny forget-me-nots on her nails. Tim cradles her hands in his like they’re precious (they are) and lets go a second later, because Sasha has a new boyfriend, because everything is different and nothing is different. 

His scars itch. But that’s clean too, in its way, cleaner than heartache. Cleaner than the creeping sense of unease that makes him wonder, sometimes, whether one of the worms got in after all and made a home for itself in his throat, sliding between his lungs and his heart, burrowing where he feels empty. He sits on the roof of the Institute and waves away Jon’s mumbled excuses when the door cracks open, shares a cigarette with him (the first time he’s smoked since he was at uni) and wonders why he feels the urge to lean into him. It’s getting colder, now. 

When things come to a head (again) and Tim finds himself trapped with Martin in impossible corridors, nauseatingly bright, churning and flipping him over and over, it is terrifying and grotesque and the most normal he has felt in weeks. Because sometimes it is easier to have a purpose, and if his purpose at that moment is just to survive, then that is the clearest direction he has had in a while. It is simpler to cling to life and fight for breath and grip Martin’s hand than it is to shuffle papers and pretend that the routine of daily life doesn’t feel like it's eroding him away, piece by piece. 

His nails sink into Martin’s palm like it’s marshmallow and the corridors turn themselves inside out with Tim in them, and he hopes against hope that that thing they saw wasn’t Sasha, and Sasha went home, because at least one of them needs to survive this damn place. Jon’s a lost cause, and if Jon is a lost cause then _Martin_ is a lost cause, and he-

And he is fighting for his life, and he doesn’t know why. 

They walk the corridors for weeks, time dripping like wax, fast-then-slow-then-fast, and when they emerge it’s been an hour and there is a body in Jon’s office and Tim thinks _at least it’s not Sasha_. Even if they don’t see her again, red hair and blue nails and a patient smile. Even then. 

There is no funeral when they finally confirm that she’s dead, was dead, has been dead. There is no memorial for Sasha, because there is nothing to memorialise. Tim stares at the picture on his lock-screen and tries to remember any other way that Sasha has ever looked, and only succeeds in his eyes stinging and his chest burning until he can’t see the picture anyway. 

Tim Stoker loves Sasha James. That is a pillar of his universe, has been since he arrived at the Institute. He doesn’t really know what that means anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> guys I'm just permanently sad about Tim tbh
> 
> [Find me on tumblr and say hi!](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com)


End file.
